Jubilant Syrian refugees across Turkey welcomed the downfall of the Bashar Assad regime in their homeland on December 8.

There are at least 3mn Syrians who crossed into Turkey during the course of Syria’s 13-year-long multi-sided war and observers will now assess how many will be eager to take the earliest opportunity to go back home and when the great return can begin in earnest.

The Associated Press (AP) reported on how large crowds overcome with joy at the unexpectedly fast defeat of murderous despot Assad, waving Syrian and Turkish flags, gathered in the main square of Kilis, a border city in Kilis province, southern Turkey.

DHA, meanwhile, spoke to Syrian refugees in Hatay province, which also lies on the Syrian frontier. Many there said it was time to go home after years of living in Turkey.

“We are free now, everyone should return to their homeland,” Mahmud Esma was quoted as saying at the Cilvegozu border gate.

Speaking in Qatar on December 9, where anti-Assad Turkey, Assad backers Russia and Iran, as well as senior officials of Arab states, failed to make any substantial progress in resolving how the new realities in the Syrian Arab Republic should play out, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Turkey “attaches great importance for the national unity, stability, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria and the well-being of the Syrian people.

“Thereby millions of Syrians who were forced to leave their homes can return to their land.”

Turkey’s frontier with Syria runs for 911 kilometres (566 miles). Ankara has been the main backer of opposition groups, dominated by foreign mercenaries, striving to put an end to Assad’s rule since the war ignited in 2011. Many observers are convinced that the offensive that brought down the dictator, who has fled to Moscow, must have had Ankara’s consent. Those who doubt Turkey’s denials that it green-lighted the operation point to an October remark made by the country’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan that "there would be soon good news" on ensuring the security of Turkey's southern borders. 

Even though the jihadi group that spearheaded the 10-day march on Damascus, Hayat Tahrir al- Sham (HTS), is designated as a terrorist organisation by Ankara, Turkish forces have operated alongside it for years in northern Syria. In fact, it is only thanks to the patronage of Erdogan that it was able to locate and grow in a pocket of Idlib province in northwest Syria, which borders Turkey.

As Assad escaped the country, Turkey was quick to give its assurances that it wants to see Syria’s territorial integrity maintained. The over-riding concern for the Turks is that Kurdish militia should not be allowed to establish autonomous areas in northern Syria that could fuel the Kurdish armed insurgency that has troubled Turkey since 1984.

Ankara is seeking to complete a “buffer zone” along its southern border with Syria. Whether that objective could lead to major fighting between Turkish-backed forces and the Turkish army with Kurdish forces in northern Syria will be watched closely, especially by the US, which remains allied with some of the Kurdish forces in the fight against Islamic State.

Sinan Ulgen, director of the Istanbul-based Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies, told the AP that first and foremost Turkey desires a stable Syria.

“The first risk that Turkey would want to avoid at all cost is the territorial disintegration of Syria, with different power structures vying to obtain autonomy on their territory,” he was quoted as saying, pointing to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party-linked (PKK-linked) Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units, the US-allied YPG, in northeast Syria.

A stable period of transition would allow Turkey to channel economic aid to Syria to create the conditions for the return of refugees, Ulgen added.

Ulgen also noted that Russia has not accused Turkey of stoking the insurgents’ advance. He said that this was partly due to not wanting Turkey to “switch to become more anti-Russia” in its approach to the war in Ukraine. “I don’t think that this creates a breaking point in Turkey-Russian relations.”

Gonul Tol, director of the US-based Middle East Institutes’ Turkish Program, observed that Turkey might not be capable of controlling the HTS, which has its own distinct interests. “HTS are a wild card. Does Turkey really want a jihadist organisation to be running a neighbouring country?” she was cited as saying.

A big difficulty for Syria is that no obvious successor to succeed Assad may emerge.     

HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani, 42, whose forces dealt the fatal blow to the Syrian strongman of nearly 25 years in just 11 days, is a one-time adherent of Al-Qaeda. Though he claims he and HTS split from Al-Qaeda in 2016 and moderated with an eye on governance, HTS remains listed as a terrorist entity by many Western nations, and even by Turkey, so there have to be big doubts that Golani and HTS can be the unifying force Syria needs.

“As the geographic scope of this expands nationally, I think it will probably become more difficult for HTS and for al-Golani to realistically steer it,” Sam Heller, a Beirut-based researcher for think-tank Century International, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). “I wouldn't assume that he's going to be in control now,” added Heller, also saying: “It's hard to know what Golani's bedrock principles are.”

Also speaking to CBC, Fawaz Gerges, a Middle East analyst at the London School of Economics, said: "I think it's a new era. Syria could go two ways. It could descend sadly and tragically into all-out social, political and ethnic violence or could basically begin the process of social healing."

If there is to be a new era of conflict-ridden chaos that prevails in Syria, part of that may have ignited on December 9, with reports that Turkish forces and aligned militia groups had opened a new front against Kurdish forces in northern Syria, even as the fall of Assad was dominating the news.

Attacks, featuring warplanes and drones, were said to be concentrated on Kurdish forces in Manbij, in the northeastern part of the Aleppo Governorate.

Turkey was looking to revise the map of Syria amid the chaos of Assad’s defeat to suit its interests, Devorah Margolin, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told The New York Times, saying that Turkey and its proxy, the Syrian National Army (SNA, formerly the Free Syrian Army FSA/OSO), were “looking to utilise the current chaos to rewrite the map in Turkey’s favour”.